Jerusalem– A former Palestinian Authority minister was killed on Sunday in an Israeli strike on his home in the Gaza Strip, the official Palestinian news agency and Hamas health ministry said.
Youssef Salama, the 68-year-old former minister of religious affairs in the Palestinian Authority, was killed in a strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Wafa news agency and the ministry reported.
Considered close to Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas, Salama served as minister between February 2005 and March 2006.
He also served as a preacher at Al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.
There was no immediate comment on his killing from the Israeli army.
Fighting raged Saturday across Gaza, where displaced Palestinians said they were “exhausted” with no end in sight to the Israeli onslaught on the besieged territory, now in its 13th week.
Smoke billowed over the Gaza Strip’s southern city of Khan Yunis, the focus of recent fighting in the grinding war, which was triggered by Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.
Further south, the border city of Rafah near Egypt was teeming with Gazans seeking safety from Israel’s relentless bombardment.
“Enough with this war! We are totally exhausted,” said Umm Louay Abu Khater, 49, who had fled her home in Khan Yunis, taking refuge in Rafah.
“We are constantly displaced from one place to another in cold weather,” she said. “The bombs keep falling on us day and night.”
The Israeli army kept up its campaign in the face of mounting international pushback.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday that Israel’s war against Hamas will last for “many months” — until the Palestinian militant group has been eliminated.
“We will guarantee that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel,” he told a news conference, adding that the military was involved in a “complex fight” and needed time to achieve its goals.
The fighting began with Hamas’s bloody October 7 attacks, which left about 1,140 people dead in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Militants also took about 250 people hostage, and Israel says 129 of them remain in captivity.
The Gaza health ministry said Sunday at least 21,822 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war with Israel erupted on October 7.
The figure includes 150 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said. It added that 56,451 people have been wounded in Gaza since the start of the war.
The Israeli army says 170 soldiers have been killed in combat inside Gaza.
An AFP correspondent reported continuous shelling of Rafah and Khan Yunis overnight, and the health ministry said “multiple” people had died in a strike on a house in Nuseirat refugee camp, in central Gaza.
‘Year of destruction’
Medics in Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis said they were facing severe shortages.
“The hospital is receiving a lot more (patients) than its capacity, in fact we are functioning at 300 percent of our… capacity,” doctor Ahmad Abu Mustafa said in footage shared by the World Health Organization (WHO).
“The beds are full… and we are basically short on all sorts of medicine supplies.”
The health ministry appealed to the international community for increased support, including assistance in evacuating patients.
The fighting has put 23 hospitals and 53 health centers out of service, while 104 ambulances have been destroyed, the ministry said.
In central Gaza’s Zawayda, Palestinians pulled the body of a child from under the rubble after an Israeli strike.
“We pulled (out) nine martyrs, who were members of a very peaceful family. Two adjacent houses were targeted,” said the area’s civil defense director, Rami al-Aidi.
The army released footage of what it said was the demolition of a complex of tunnels in north Gaza that had been used by Hamas as a hideout.
Ahmed al-Baz, a 33-year-old Palestinian displaced from Gaza City, said this year had been “the worst in my life”.
“It was a year of destruction and devastation,” he said in Rafah, surrounded by tents in a makeshift camp.
“We just want the war to end, and start the new year at home, with a ceasefire declared.”
Mediation efforts
International mediators — who last month brokered a one-week truce that saw more than 100 hostages released and some aid enter Gaza — continue in their efforts to secure a new pause in fighting.
US news outlet Axios and Israeli website Ynet, both citing unnamed Israeli officials, reported that Qatari mediators had told Israel that Hamas was prepared to resume talks on new hostage releases in exchange for a ceasefire.
And a Hamas delegation was in Cairo on Friday to discuss an Egyptian plan proposing renewable ceasefire, a staggered release of hostages for Palestinians held by Israel, and ultimately an end to the war, sources close to Hamas say.
Islamic Jihad, another armed group fighting alongside Hamas, said on Saturday that Palestinian factions were “in the process” of evaluating the Egyptian proposal.
A response will come “within days”, the group’s chief negotiator, Muhammad al-Hindi, said.
Asked about the negotiations on Saturday, Netanyahu said Hamas had been “giving all kinds of ultimatums that we didn’t accept”.
“We are seeing a certain shift (but) I don’t want to create an expectation,” he added.
As Netanyahu spoke, hundreds of relatives and supporters of the hostages demonstrated in Tel Aviv to keep up the pressure on his government to bring their loved ones home.
“The scariest thing in Gaza was to be forgotten,” said former hostage Moran Stela Yanai, who was released during last month’s truce.
Hamas meanwhile hit out at Washington’s announcement it had approved a $147.5 million sale of high-explosive artillery munitions to Israel, saying it was “clear evidence of the American administration’s full sponsorship of this criminal war”.
An Israeli siege imposed after October 7, following years of crippling blockade, has led to dire shortages of food, safe water, fuel and medicine in Gaza, with aid convoys offering only sporadic relief.
The UN says more than 85 percent of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have fled their homes.
The Gaza war has intensified tensions across the region.
In the occupied West Bank, Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian motorist at the entrance to the Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron. The army said he had attempted to run down soldiers.
Israel has traded frequent cross-border fire with Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Hezbollah movement. Early Saturday the army said it had carried out strikes on Syria in response to rocket fire.
The bombardment killed two fighters from a Hezbollah-linked group, Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
US strikes kill 10 Houthi rebels
US Navy helicopters fired on Iran-backed Houthi rebels attempting to board a cargo ship off Yemen Sunday, the military said, with the rebels reporting 10 fighters dead or missing.
The clash in the Red Sea marked a deadly escalation since the United States set up a multinational naval task force in early December to protect the vital shipping lane against attacks by the Houthis, who control the Yemeni capital Sanaa and much of the country’s Red Sea coast.
The rebels — who say they are acting in solidarity with Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza — have repeatedly fired drones and missiles at passing ships in the seaway through which 12 percent of global trade passes.
US Central Command said the navy had responded to a distress call from the Maersk Hangzhou, a Danish-owned container ship that reported coming under attack for a second time in 24 hours while transiting the Red Sea.
The vessel had earlier been targeted with two anti-ship ballistic missiles. One was shot down by the US military and the other hit the Maersk Hangzhou.
The Huthis had then fired on US helicopters, which “returned fire in self-defence”, sinking three of four small boats that had come within 20 metres (yards) of the ship, according to the CENTCOM statement.
It said the crews of the three vessels were killed while the fourth boat fled the area.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree confirmed in a statement on X that 10 members of the group’s naval forces were “killed or missing” in the US strike.
Saree said the Maersk was attacked as part of the rebels’ campaign to stop Israeli or Israel-bound vessels from transiting the Red Sea.
“Yemen’s naval forces once again remind all countries of our advice not to be drawn into American plans aimed at sparking a conflict in the Red Sea”, saying the Houthis are determined to confront “any aggression against our country and our people”.